–Meditations on Trees–2010-2012

Nature home page
These pieces began with a show at Claudia Kussano Atelier in November 2010. I created nine works specifically inspired by the aesthetic of both her atelier and her beautiful jewelry designs. Based on that work, Elina Davenport of Alternative Design Studio invited me to do a show in her shop, for which I created another twenty-some pieces, these ones inspired by a foggy day in Golden Gate Park (musings on that work here). And then I returned to Claudia Kussano almost one year later, with five or six new pieces. Several sold before I could document them, but these works are a good representation of that year of meditating on trees.

The Meditations on Trees series is an entirely different exercise [than most of my work], a connection to the way of observing I grew up with, when—though I sometimes called it “boredom”—I had a luxury of “unstructured” time to contemplate the shapes, smells, textures, luminosity and grit of the organic world around me. This work raises the artistic question of how—and why—to represent nature. Since it is its own best representation, and a photo serves for accurate memory, why wrangle with it unless you can bring something unique and valuable to the table? I see Claudia Kussano’s art echoing this question and answering it with a similar play between detailed attention and imaginative transformation through current materials to capture the fascination and calm of nature in contemporary form. Similarly, I have sought in this work to retain a faithfulness to the natural forms of trees through a unique treatment of modern materials, while retaining the spirit, the aesthetic, the recall of the thing itself, to create a contemporary tribute, a totem for a modern space. —from the Claudia Kussano 2010 statement
The earliest paintings in this series can be seen here.
Available work price list, January 2013, here.